{"id":1526,"date":"2010-01-07T13:42:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-07T13:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/yimcatholic\/2010\/01\/yimc-book-club-%e2%80%9corthodoxy%e2%80%9d-chapter-8\/"},"modified":"2017-01-24T19:13:34","modified_gmt":"2017-01-25T00:13:34","slug":"yimc-book-club-orthodoxy-chapter-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/yimcatholic\/2010\/01\/yimc-book-club-orthodoxy-chapter-8.html","title":{"rendered":"YIMC Book Club, \u201cOrthodoxy,\u201d Chapter 8"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

We have just one more chapter, one more week left on GK Chesterton\u2019s Orthodoxy, <\/i>and it looks like a horse race to decide the next book. Will it be Hillaire Belloc\u2019s The Great Heresies <\/i>or CS Lewis\u2019s Mere Christianity? <\/i>Caryll Houselander\u2019s Reed of God<\/i> could still make a comeback, but Par Lagerkvist\u2019s Barabbas <\/i>has been left at the starting gate. If you haven\u2019t voted yet, please do. <\/i> <\/p>\n

<\/a>Chapter 8, \u201cThe Romance of Orthodoxy\u201d<\/b>
When I was in boarding school and college, two books defined my thinking about world religions and helped me leave orthodox Christianity in my rear-view mirror: Aldous Huxley\u2019s The Perennial Philosophy<\/i> and Joseph Campbell\u2019s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. <\/i>Without splitting hairs, I\u2019ll say the two books agree. They agree that all the great religious teachings of the world\u2014all the minor ones, as well\u2014say the same thing, essentially. Christ or Krishna\u2014what\u2019s the big diff?<\/p>\n

I am no historian of religion or philosophy, but I\u2019ll bet that these two books, so revered by the adolescent Webster Bull and many other seekers of his generation, helped pave the way for what my Pope has decried as \u201ca dictatorship of relevatism,\u201d notably in his homily at the Mass for the election of the Roman Pontiff<\/a>, April 18, 2005.
<\/b>
<\/a>In this chapter, Chesterton meets this problem head-on. Because the problem had already begun to show itself in his time. \u201cA short time ago,\u201d he writes, \u201cMrs. Besant, in an interesting essay, announced that there was only one religion in the world, that all faiths were only versions or perversions of it . . . \u201d \u201cMrs. Besant\u201d would be Annie Besant, grand old lady of the Theosophical Society and an opinion-maker of alternative religious thought at the turn of the last century. (That\u2019s her in high-priestess get-up at left. You can read about her here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Chesterton insists that there is a big diff, that the difference between Christianity and Buddhism<\/a>, the religion most commonly likened to Christianity, is night and day. I\u2019ll list a few bullet points, then turn the discussion over to readers.<\/p>\n